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Cumbrian woman beat up husband with baseball bat

A woman has been sent to prison for beating up her husband with a baseball bat in an argument about their TV remote control.

Kirsty Hannah Speakes, 24, hit her husband David several times with the bat, which he kept beside him on his armchair at their home in Gilmour Street, Maryport.

Mr Speakes – who is disabled after a heart and kidney transplant – was left with a cut head and multiple bruising.

At Carlisle Crown Court his wife – who has a previous conviction for injuring him with a knife in another drunken assault – was jailed for 16 months after she pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm on him.

Prosecutor Dick Binstead told the court Speakes had been her husband’s full-time carer ever since the transplant operations he had soon after they were married five years ago.

He said that on the evening of June 9 they were at home together drinking – “she, more than he was,” he said – and an argument blew up in which they started fighting over the TV remote.

Mr Speakes noticed that his wife had locked him in the house and taken the keys out of the door, so he decided to “cause her some damage” as the only way of getting out, said Mr Binstead.

Mr Speakes hit his wife on the back of the head with his baseball bat, and she retaliated by grabbing the bat from him and hitting him about ten times with it, causing him to fall back into his armchair.

He managed to call the police, and when they arrived both he and his wife – who had a bump on the back of her head – were arrested.

Mr Binstead told the court he did not know why Mr Speakes had not been charged with any offence.

When interviewed by the police afterwards the wife said that though they often argued when they had been drinking her relationship with her husband was “quite perfect”.

In mitigation defence barrister Peter McCartney said Speakes had an “extremely troubled” childhood, which had left her unable to control her emotions. She had been her mother’s carer since the age of ten, and had left school at 14 to look after her, he said.

She had been with her husband since she was 17, and had moved from her home in Stoke-on-Trent – leaving behind her family and all who supported her – to be with him in Carlisle.

She married him five years ago and had been his carer ever since he had his transplant operations six months later, he said.

They were now “separated irreconcilably”, he said.

Passing sentence, Judge Paul Batty QC said Speakes’ attack on her husband had been “merciless”.